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Should the US take any action if it becomes apparent that the Suez Canal will fall into the hands of the wrong people?

An unstable Suez Canal has the ability to have a global effect for the worst. The possible scenarios are very troubling.
For example, practically overnight, oil is now flirting with $100/barrel. This is only the beginning.

Should the US take any action if it becomes apparent that the Suez Canal will fall into the hands of the wrong people?

An unstable Suez Canal has the ability to have a global effect for the worst. The possible scenarios are very troubling.
For example, practically overnight, oil is now flirting with $100/barrel. This is only the beginning.

The whole "blood for oil" thing will surely come back into play. Despite this protecting the supply of oil is something that will have to be done. The US and NATO could simply station troops around the Suez Canal in order to protect it while Egypt is transformed into either a failed state or an islamic republic.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president declared Friday that Egypt's uprising shows a new Middle East is emerging that will doom Israel and break free of American "interference," even as Tehran clamps down harder on its own domestic opposition movement.

Iran has sought to portray the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as a replay of its 1979 Islamic Revolution - whose anniversary was marked Friday by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech and state-organized rallies that included chants of support for Egypt's anti-government protests.

"Despite all the (West's) complicated and satanic designs ... a new Middle East is emerging without the Zionist regime and U.S. interference, a place where the arrogant powers will have no place," Ahmadinejad told a crowd filling Tehran's Azadi, or Freedom, Square.

Iran's state TV broadcast simultaneous live footage of the gathering with shots from Cairo's downtown Tahrir Square, the center of Egypt's protests since late January.

In Iran's calculation, the revolt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak equals a blow to U.S. influence in the region and carries echoes of Iran's Islamic Revolution, which deposed the Western-allied monarchy and brought hard-line clerics to power.

Iran has been highly critical of Egypt's regime for its pro-U.S. policies and peace pact with Israel. For years, Iranian officials commissioned murals and other symbols to honor the gunman who killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, two years after the peace accord with Israel took effect. Jordan also has a peace deal with Israel.

At the same time, Iranian authorities have been pushed into a corner by their support for the Egyptian uprising.

Iranian opposition groups have called for marches on Monday to express solidarity with Egypt's demonstrators. Iranian officials consider it a backdoor attempt to revive anti-government demonstrations and have warned of sharp crackdowns on efforts to return to the streets.

In Washington, White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor denounced Iran's "hypocrisy" for claiming to support Egypt's people while smothering internal voices of dissent.

"For all of its empty talk about Egypt, the government of Iran should allow the Iranian people the same universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate in Tehran that the people are exercising in Cairo," he said. "Governments must respect the rights of their people and be responsive to their aspirations."

Tens of thousands marched down Tehran's main boulevard in state-organized rallies, some chanting in support of Egypt's anti-government protesters. Some Iranians set an effigy of Mubarak on fire while others mocked him with quips playing off his last name, which means "congratulations" in Farsi.

Ahmadinejad, speaking just hours before Mubarak resigned and transferred control of the country to the armed forces, urged Egyptian protesters to persevere.

"It's your right to be free. It's your right to exercise your will and sovereignty ... and choose the type of government and the rulers," said Ahmadinejad.

Last week, Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, turned the tables on Iran. Aboul Gheit told reporters that Iranian officials should listen to the calls for reform from within their own country rather than "distracting the Iranian people's attention by hiding behind what is happening in Egypt."

"Iran's critical moment has not come yet, but we will watch that moment with great anticipation and interest," he said in Cairo.

Iran is applying increased pressure to keep opposition groups from seizing the moment with rallies linked to the Egyptian crisis.

Security forces have arrested several opposition activists, including aides to Iran's opposition leaders.

Authorities also placed Mahdi Karroubi, one of Iran's opposition leaders, under house arrest, posting security officers at his door in response to his calls for an Iranian opposition rally in support of the demonstrations in Egypt.

Karroubi's website, sahamnews.org, said security officials informed Karroubi that the restrictions would remain in place until after Feb. 14.

State Prosecutor Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi rejected an appeal for marches by Karroubi and fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was declared the runner-up in June 2009 elections that critics say were rigged to give Ahmadinejad victory.

Hossein Hamedani, a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, said any attempt by the opposition to rally supporters on Feb. 14 would be crushed.

Mousavi's aide Saleh Noghrehkar and Sadroddin Beheshti, son of another Mousavi aide, Ali Reza Beheshti, were among those arrested, according to opposition website kaleme.com. The website said another opposition activist, Fariba Ebtehaj, a close aide to former reformist Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, has also been arrested.

In London, the British Broadcasting Corp. said the signal for its Persian service was being jammed beginning late Thursday from a source in Iran. The BBC said it believes the action was an attempt to block its extensive coverage of the Egyptian protests.

(This version CORRECTS that marches are called for on Monday).)

*Imagine this two faced "asshat" cheering on Revolution in Egypt to the people as if supporting their Freedom of Choice while yet locking up the opposition in private....You know the opposition, the same ones that have taken to the streets in Eqypt because they want Rights to elect their leaders. You will note they also have been jamming transmissions of coverage of the protest in fear. Iran's theocracy must be quick to act against the opposition or "green party" before the very same happens to them. Lets see what happens when Assahola and dinnerjacket screw the people again come "Elections". I hope Iran erupts into protests the same as the Egyptians did. The Egyptians have set the standard and have achieved. Can the Iranians rid themselves of the very same?

There are no Mubaraks on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, but there sure ought to be.

The mounting pressure from 18 days of historic protests finally drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office, after three decades as his nation's iron-fisted ruler. But over that time, Mubarak amassed a fortune that should finance a pretty comfortable retirement. The British Guardian newspaper cites Middle Eastern sources placing the wealth of Mubarak and his family at somewhere between $40 billion and $70 billion. That's a pretty good pension for government work. The world's richest man--Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim--is worth about $54 billion, by comparison. Bill Gates is close behind, with a net worth of about $53 billion.

Mubarak, of course, was a military man, not a businessman. But running a country with a suspended constitution for 30 years generates certain perks, and Mubarak was in a position to take a slice of virtually every significant business deal in the country, from development projects throughout the Nile basin to transit projects on the Suez Canal, which is a conduit for about 4 percent of the world's oil shipments. "There was no accountability, no need for transparency," says Prof. Amaney Jamal of Princeton University. "He was able to reach into the economic sphere and benefit from monopolies, bribery fees, red-tape fees, and nepotism. It was guaranteed profit."

Had the typical Egyptian enjoyed a morsel of that, Mubarak might still be in power. But Egypt, despite a cadre of well-educated young people, has struggled as an economic backwater. The nation's GDP per capita is just $6,200, according to the CIA--one-seventh what it is in the United States. That output ranks 136th in the world, even though Egypt ranks 16th in population. Mubarak had been working on a set of economic reforms, but they stalled during the global recession. The chronic lack of jobs and upward mobility was perhaps the biggest factor driving millions of enraged Egyptian youths into the streets, demanding change.

Estimates of Mubarak's wealth will probably be hard to verify, if not impossible (one reason dictators tend not to make it onto Forbes's annual list). His money is certainly not sitting in an Egyptian vault, waiting to be counted. And his delayed exit may have allowed Mubarak time to move money around and hide significant parts of his fortune. The Swiss government has said it is temporarily freezing any assets in Swiss banks that could be linked to Mubarak, an uncharacteristically aggressive move for the secretive banking nation. But that doesn't mean the money will ever be returned to the Egyptian people, and it may even find its way to Mubarak eventually. Other Mubarak funds are reportedly sitting in British banks, and Mubarak was no doubt wily enough to squire away some cash in unlikely places. Plus, an eventual exile deal could allow Mubarak to retain some of his wealth, no questions asked, as long as he and his family leave Egypt and make no further bids for power.

Epic skimming is a common privilege of Middle Eastern despots, and Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, were a bit less conspicuous than some of the Saudi princes and other Middle Eastern royals seen partying from time to time on the French Riviera or other hotspots. The family does reportedly own posh estates in London, New York, and Beverly Hills, plus a number of properties around the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, where Mubarak reportedly went after resigning the presidency.

Mubarak also spread the wealth far and wide in Egyptian power circles--another Middle Eastern tradition--one reason he incurred the kind of loyalty that allowed him to rule for a remarkable three decades. Top Army officials were almost certainly on his payroll, which might help explain why the Army eased him out in the end--allowing a kind of in-country exile--instead of hounding him out of Egypt or imprisoning him once it was clear the tide had turned against him for good.

That money trail, in fact, will help determine whether Egypt becomes a more prosperous, democratic country, or continues to muddle along as an economic basket case. Even though he's out of power, Mubarak may still be able to influence the Army officials running the country, through the financial connections that made them all wealthy. And if not Mubarak, the next leader may be poised to start lining his pockets the same way Mubarak did. For Egypt to have a more effective, transparent economy, all of that will have to be cleaned up. There are probably a lot of people in Cairo who have been checking their bank balances lately

Trust gets you killed, love gets you hurt, and being REAL gets you hated.

Lawmakers also named former President Mohammad Khatami in some of the death chants.

The calls for the leaders' executions come after a particularly deadly month in Iran. At least 66 people were executed in January, according to Iranian media reports. Most of the executions were reportedly carried out for drug offenses, although at least three involved political prisoners, a U.N. statement said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed alarm earlier this month over the number of executions.

Brutality and hypocrisy in Iran

Could Iran be the next Egypt?

Clinton denounces Iranian 'hypocrisy'

Iranian leaders have praised Egypt's revolution, but Monday when protesters in Iran took to the streets the government cracked down hard.

Last week, the Iranian government rounded up activists after Karrubi and Moussavi called for supporters to gather at Azadi Square -- the site of mass protests by Iran's opposition movement after the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Despite the security crackdown, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Tehran Monday.

Patrolling security forces battled protesters with batons and tear gas for much of the day.

The massive crowd was largely cleared from the city's streets by nightfall and the main squares near Tehran University remained free of police, security forces or protesters.

Dozens of demonstrators were detained during Monday's protests, while videos posted on the showed others had been chased and beaten.

One person was shot and killed during the protests, according to Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. Several others were injured and listed in serious condition as a result of the shooting, which the Iranian government blamed on "agitators and seditionists."

The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that nine security force members were among those injured in the protests, which the country's deputy police chief called "illegal gatherings ... directed from America, England and Israel."

"The hands of sedition leaders are drenched in blood and they should answer for these actions," Ahmad Reza Radan said, according to IRNA.

Video uploaded to YouTube showed throngs of demonstrators marching, burning posters of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and in one instance beating a man who appeared to try to remove a poster from the hands of protesters.

Other YouTube video showed police in riot gear pursuing dozens of people running away from the baton-wielding officers.

Other videos show similar protests going on in other cities in Iran such as Shiraz and Isfahan.

CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the videos and witnesses declined to be named for fear of retribution.

Reporting from Iran proved extremely difficult Monday -- foreign journalists were denied visas, accredited journalists living in the country were restricted from covering the demonstrations and internet speeds slowed to a crawl in an apparent attempt to both limit protest organizing and restrict information from being transmitted out of the country.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, released a statement Tuesday urging Iranian officials to "fully respect and protect the rights of their citizens, including freedom of expression and the right to assemble peacefully."

Iranian leaders have praised Egypt's revolution, but Monday when protesters in Iran took to the streets the government cracked down hard.

I wondered why the administration in Iran praised Egypt's revolution. Your earlier article told me its because they saw it in the eyes of their earlier one.

So after praising people power they change their tune very quickly. Sounds like a bad case of 'Do as i say and not as i do'.

The day will come, when their 'legitimacy' ends in the eyes of the public. It won't stop there and will carry over to the forces who will refuse to do their duty and allow the ppl their say. Plot's different but the ending is always the same.

The toxic residue of colonialism
The overt age of grand empires gave way to the age of covert imperial hegemony, but now the edifice is crumbling.

At least, overtly, there has been no talk from either Washington or Tel Aviv - the governments with most to lose as the Egyptian revolution unfolds - of military intervention. Such restraint is more expressive of geopolitical sanity than postcolonial morality, but still it enables some measure of change to take place that unsettles, temporarily at least, the established political order.

And yet, by means seen and unseen, external actors, especially the United States, with a distinct American blend of presumed imperial and paternal prerogatives are seeking to shape and limit the outcome of this extraordinary uprising of the Egyptian people, long held in subsidised bondage by the cruel and corrupt Mubarak dictatorship. What is the most defining feature of this American-led diplomacy-from-without is the seeming propriety of managing the turmoil, so that the regime survives and the demonstrators return to what is perversely being called "normalcy".

I find most astonishing that President Obama so openly claimed the authority to instruct the Mubarak regime about how it was supposed to respond to the revolutionary uprising. I am not surprised at the effort, and would be surprised by its absence - but merely by the lack of any sign of imperial shyness in a world order that is supposedly built around the legitimacy of self-determination, national sovereignty, and democracy.

And almost as surprising, is the failure of Mubarak to pretend in public that such interference in the guise of guidance is unacceptable - even if, behind closed doors, he listens submissively and acts accordingly. This geopolitical theatre performance of master and servant suggests the persistence of the colonial mentality on the part of both coloniser - and their national collaborators.

The only genuine post-colonial message would be one of deference: "Stand aside, and applaud." The great transformative struggles of the past century involved a series of challenges throughout the global south to get rid of the European colonial empires. But political independence did not bring an end to the more indirect, but still insidious, methods of control designed to protect economic and strategic interests. Such a dynamic meant reliance on political leaders that would sacrifice the wellbeing of their own people to serve the wishes of their unacknowledged former colonial masters, or their Western successors - the United States largely displacing France and the United Kingdom in the Middle East after the Suez crisis of 1956.

And these post-colonial servants of the West would be well-paid autocrats vested with virtual ownership rights in relation to the indigenous wealth of their country, provided they remained receptive to foreign capital. In this regard, the Mubarak regime was a poster child of post-colonial success.

Western liberal eyes were long accustomed not to notice the internal patterns of abuse that were integral to this foreign policy success - and if occasionally noticed by some intrepid journalist, who would then be ignored, or if necessary discredited as some sort of "leftist". And if this failed to deflect criticism, they would point out, usually with an accompanying condescending smile, that torture and the like came with Arab cultural territory - a reality that savvy outsiders adapted to without any discomfort.

Actually, in this instance, such practices were quite convenient, Egypt serving as one of the interrogation sites for the insidious practice of "extreme rendition", by which the CIA transports "terrorist suspects" to accommodating foreign countries that willingly provide torture tools and facilities. Is this what is meant by "a human rights presidency"? The irony should not be overlooked that President Obama's special envoy to the Mubarak government in the crisis was none other than Frank Wisner, an American with a most notable CIA lineage.

There should be clarity about the relationship between this kind of post-colonial state, serving US regional interests - oil, Israel, containment of Islam, avoidance of unwanted proliferation of nuclear weapons - in exchange for power, privilege, and wealth vested in a tiny corrupt national elite that sacrifices the wellbeing and dignity of the national populace in the process.

Such a structure in the post-colonial era, where national sovereignty and human rights infuse popular consciousness can only be maintained by erecting high barriers of fear, reinforced by state terror, designed to intimidate the populace from pursuing their goals and values. When these barriers are breached, as recently in Tunisia and Egypt, then the fragility of the oppressive regime glows in the dark.

The dictator either runs for the nearest exit, as did Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, or is dumped by his entourage and foreign friends so that the revolutionary challenge can be tricked into a premature accommodation. This latter process seemed to represent the one of latest maneuverings of the palace elite in Cairo and their backers in the White House. Only time will tell whether the furies of counterrevolution will win the day, possibly by gunfire and whip - and possibly through mollifying gestures of reform that become unfulfillable promises in due course if the old regime is not totally reconstructed.

Unfulfillable - because corruption and gross disparities of wealth amid mass impoverishment can only be sustained, post-Tahrir Square, through the reimposition of oppressive rule. And if it is not oppressive, then it will not be able for very long to withstand demands for rights, for social and economic justice, and due cause for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Here is the crux of the ethical irony. Washington is respectful of the logic of self-determination, so long as it converges with the US grand strategy, and is oblivious to the will of the people whenever its expression is seen as posing a threat to the neoliberal overlords of the globalised world economy, or to strategic alignments that seem so dear to State Department or Pentagon planners.

As a result there is an inevitable to-ing and fro-ing as the United States tries to bob and weave, celebrating the advent of democracy in Egypt,complaining about the violence and torture of the tottering regime - while doing what it can to manage the process from outside, which means preventing genuine change, much less a democratic transformation of the Egyptian state. Anointing the main CIA contact and Mubarak loyalist, Omar Suleiman, to preside over the transition process on behalf of Egypt seems a thinly disguised plan to throw Mubarak to the crowd, while stabilising the regime he presided over for more than 30 years.

I would have expected more subtlety on the part of the geopolitical managers, but perhaps its absence is one more sign of imperial myopia that so often accompanies the decline of great empires.

It is notable that most protesters, when asked by the media about their reasons for risking death and violence by being in the Egyptian streets, responded with variations on the phrases: "We want our rights" or: "We want freedom and dignity". Of course, joblessness, poverty, food security - and anger at the corruption, abuses, and dynastic pretensions of the Mubarak regime offer an understandable infrastructure of rage that undoubtedly fuels the revolutionary fires. But it is "rights" and "dignity" that seem to float on the surface of this awakened political consciousness.

These ideas, to a large extent nurtured in the hothouse of Western consciousness and then innocently exported as a sign of good will, like "nationalism" a century earlier, might originally be intended only as public relations move, but over time, such ideas gave rise to the dreams of the oppressed and victimised - and when the unexpected historical moment finally arrived, burst into flame. I remember talking a decade or so ago to Indonesian radicals in Jakarta who talked of the extent to which their initial involvement in anti-colonial struggle was stimulated by what they had learned from their Dutch colonial teachers about the rise of nationalism as a political ideology in the West.

Ideas may be disseminated with conservative intent, but if they later become appropriated on behalf of the struggles of oppressed peoples, such ideas are reborn - and serve as the underpinnings of a new emancipatory politics. Nothing better illustrates this Hegelian journey than the idea of "self-determination", initially proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I. Wilson was a leader who sought above all to maintain order, believed in satisfying the aims of foreign investors and corporations, and had no complaints about the European colonial empires. For him, self-determination was merely a convenient means to arrange the permanent breakup of the Ottoman Empire through the formation of a series of ethnic states.

Little did Wilson imagine, despite warnings from his secretary of state, that self-determination could serve other gods - and become a powerful mobilising tool to overthrow colonial rule. In our time, human rights has followed a similarly winding path, sometimes being no more than a propaganda banner used to taunt enemies during the Cold War, sometimes as a convenient hedge against imperial identity - and sometimes as the foundation of revolutionary zeal, as seems to be the case in the unfinished and ongoing struggles for rights and dignity taking place throughout the Arab world in a variety of forms.

It is impossible to predict how this future will play out. There are too many forces at play in circumstances of radical uncertainty. In Egypt, for instance, it is widely believed that the army holds most of the cards, and that where it finally decides to put its weight will determine the outcome. But is such conventional wisdom not just one more sign that hard power realism dominates our imagination, and that historical agency belongs in the end to the generals and their weapons, and not to the people in the streets?

Of course, there is a blurring of pressures as the army could have been merely trying to go with the flow, siding with the winner once the outcome was clear. Is there any reason to rely on the wisdom, judgment, and good will of armies - not just in Egypt whose commanders owe their positions to Mubarak - but throughout the world?

In Iran the army did stand aside, and a revolutionary process transformed the Shah's edifice of corrupt and brutal governance. The people momentarily prevailed, only to have their extraordinary nonviolent victory snatched away in a subsequent counter-revolutionary move that substituted theocracy for democracy.

There are few instances of revolutionary victory, and in those few instances, it is rarer still to carry forward the revolutionary mission without disruption. The challenge is to sustain the revolution in the face of almost inevitable counter-revolutionary projects, some launched by those who were part of the earlier movement unified against the old order, but now determined to hijack the victory for its own ends. The complexities of the revolutionary moment require utmost vigilance on the part of those who view emancipation, justice, and democracy as their animating ideals, because there will be enemies who seek to seize power at the expense of humane politics.

One of the most impressive features of the Egyptian revolution up to this point has been the extraordinary ethos of nonviolence and solidarity exhibited by the massed demonstrators, even in the face of repeated bloody provocations of the baltagiyya dispatched by the regime. This ethos refused to be diverted by these provocations, and we can only hope against hope that the provocations will cease, and that counter-revolutionary tides will subside, sensing either the futility of assaulting history or imploding at long last from the build up of corrosive effects from a long embrace of an encompassing illegitimacy.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

Those who know don't speak
He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

The end is a new start.The big question is what's next for the Europe and US?The new reality in the MidEast is the most momentous change in a long,long time.We will have to deal with a new center of power on the world stage. That in itself adds increased potential for instability(ignoring for the sake of argument the specifics of the region ).How we can deal with that?How can we transform and into what?Will that lead to a revolution in the West?Afterall,we have our own issues,which aren't insignificant.
Cheap talk about the triumph of democracy is not helping.I mean bussiness.

Those who know don't speak
He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

Nothing much until the Arabs sort out their internal problems, optimistically, I give it a decade.

Originally Posted by Mihais

The new reality in the MidEast is the most momentous change in a long,long time.We will have to deal with a new center of power on the world stage.

Egypt leads the rest follow. But there is also Turkey & Saudi Arabia. These would be the big three. Will they always see eye to eye within ? Recent history has shown that arab brotherhood does not preclude backstabbing among their own when appropriate. I suppose this will happen less if more govts are elected by their people.

They'll have to try hard to present themselves as a power bloc, to the EU say. But how well does the EU handle differences. Lots of powerplays there as well. Arab block isn't going to be any better. There is not going to be another China or India here, there are too many divisions and countries to allow that to happen.

Originally Posted by Mihais

That in itself adds increased potential for instability(ignoring for the sake of argument the specifics of the region ).How we can deal with that?

Yes, if we think of Turkey & Brazil trying to broker a deal with Iran. Maybe not instability but increased interference. More consensus required among partners than could be had with pliant dictators.

Originally Posted by Mihais

How can we transform and into what?

Does former warsaw pact serve as any guide here, before they were pro-russia, now it is pro-us. Arabs will be somewhere in between. Maybe not as pro-us publically if still privately. If they want to go the democratic route then west will be more valuable than russia here.

Originally Posted by Mihais

Will that lead to a revolution in the West?Afterall,we have our own issues,which aren't insignificant.

Does former warsaw pact serve as any guide here, before they were pro-russia, now it is pro-us. Arabs will be somewhere in between. Maybe not as pro-us publically if still privately. If they want to go the democratic route then west will be more valuable than russia here.

It does not apply.East Europe is part of Europe just as much as the west.Besides,there is no Russia to choose,right now.There is however a China,that does not have the baggage of the WEst,as they prove it again and again in Africa.There is also an India to make bussiness with.

Originally Posted by Double Edge

Sorry, this bit i do not follow

What revolution in the west ? you already had that ages ago.

We'll live and we'll see.How about the changing of status from being the best to one among the rest.That can and will have consequences.

Those who know don't speak
He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

But the armies of those Arab countries have been used to American largesse for some time now. China & Russia offer additional alternatives to the Arab countries to hedge with. Democracy in the arab world might loosen US grip some.

This it would appear is the initial problem, that the countries choice who to align with strategically is no longer dictated by one person but is up to the people of those countries to decide. The US would have to craft policies to lobby the country as a whole or at the very least the dominating power grps within as would Russia & China. Who charms best, wins.

In the near term everything depends on how US, Russia & China play their cards in the Arab world BEFORE anybody there rises up and changes the picture as your previous two post would imply.

China would be the spoiler. Much to gain by increasing Chinese influence in the middle east to loosen US grip in her neighbourhood. The author of that paper feels the US would not be able to go it alone in the changing environment of the Middle East given existing obligations in the Far East and that Russia would be a better partner to co-opt here.